I never want to sleep in these hours leading up to the time where I absolutely need to be awake. I laid in my bed, thinking about my memories of Sicklerville, New Jersey, where I lived from as early as I can remember to sometime in first grade, and wanting to listen to The Mountain Goats' We Shall All Be Healed.

Mostly my thoughts are about a girl named Megan who had red hair and was baby-sat by the same woman I was afterschool and during the summer months and who I really liked at the time. My memories are of course vague, but I nonetheless hope she ended up being a good person. I was in kindergarten when she was in first grade. I was fond of her in a way that boys are fond of girls before they know what sex is but know that close relationships between boys and girls are both rare and incredibly important, something to be proud of.

After I moved out of Sicklerville I became close friends with a dude I'm now very different than. But the important thing about the story isn't the difference between our friendship in second grade and our friendship now, it's the period where we weren't that close (because I moved yet again) and when we started talking again to discover both of us liked They Might Be Giants and had similar relationships with our brothers.

When I got to Evergreen, there were these two people who were friends when they were both in preschool and ended up attending the same college and becoming roommates after an extended time apart.

These are the kinds of things I think about when I think about the people I will probably never see again.

I remember leaving Sicklerville around what must've been around Christmastime, standing outside an awning, in the hall by the front door, everyone else in the front room where there was no TV, but there was a couch and I would sit and wait for my mom to arrive when there was something I didn't want to watch on TV. (Also sometimes in that room there would be games of Mouse Trap.) I remember telling that room full of people, my babysitter and that girl Megan that just because I was leaving didn't mean I wouldn't be coming back, because my dad would still be living in Sicklerville. I didn't know he'd end up moving back in with his parents in Collingswood. I didn't know I was lying at the time. But when I think back on that memory, I remember a sickly moment, with not bright-enough lighting and a general unpleasantness.

A few years back my mom and I drove through the old neighborhood, where our house and that belonging to the babysitter still existed, and the whole town of Sicklerville had this horrible vibe to it that we could sense even from inside the car. Both my mom and I picked up on it, and we wondered if the people who lived there currently were able to feel it.

At the beach with roommates, thinking of bandnames. I came up with a lot, most of which I have forgotten and didn't get big responses. Most were long sentences more appropriate for song titles.

Anyway: Rhymin' and Gar-funky!

Went to the Mt. Eerie/Evens show. I talked with Ian Mackaye about whether or not Horses and Flowers were any good. In awkward form. I ended by just saying "I'm retarded." That said: According to him, Horses are good, he hasn't seen Flowers and thinks they've stopped playing and there's another band to form in the wake of Black Eyes called... Hand-Fed Babies or something.

The Evens were good. I'm retarded.

This was something that almost worked itself into an earlier entry, but I didn't know where to go with it. I need to work this out.

Hunter S. Thompson is dead. This says many things about journalism, politics, and America. None of which I'm going to discuss, although I could.

But: I read Thompson's obituary for Nixon tonight, and I was reminded of something that applies today: Objective journalism doesn't get the job done.

Here's the quote: "Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism--which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful. "

This applies to George W. Bush and the fact that he was elected. And of course I would say that. But I mean fuck. There's a reason The Daily Show seems more accurate, despite Jon Stewart seeming like he simply actively wishes for more objective news reporting. Or something. I really don't even know what Jon Stewart wants. I know he thinks of the cable news punditry as something of a debacle, and you know, he's right.

But.

What's the problem there? Is it the lack of intelligence? The inclination to be partisan hacks? That these people aren't shouting at the people in power so much as they're shouting at one another? Because the issue isn't that they're shouting.

Journalism should be less objective, because, in addition to the flaws Thompson cites, objectivity is inherently a lie. My friend Jason's ditched his journalism major for just this reason. (Jason, if you're reading this: Fucking scriptwriting? Fucking scriptwriting? No. If you'd met my roommate who writes screenplays this would be more clear, but fuck all that, the most importan thing is that film/video production means you can do it yourself. You don't need anyone to tell you how to fucking write, you need someone to tell you how to use the tools.)

But yes, I want to work this out. Maybe it's that the place for objective journalism is on TV, but the written word should allow for voices? (BTW, I think this would end up saving newspapers from low sales.) Right now it's the other way around. To see newspapers becoming more voice-oriented would in many ways just be mirroring cable news at this point, and that's an abyss that should not be gazed into. If the voice was a liberal one, that would be something of an alternative. The thing is with newspapers is that in the world I want to live in, the articles are very long. Long articles are hard to shit out overnight.

But no: I want to work this out. I want to fix journalism. I want to know what it is exactly that it should be. (In more ways than simply thinking it should be more informative. There's an easy solution there: Read The Guardian. Did you know the U.S. is creating ads for Pakistani television awarding money to those who catch Bin Laden and his cronies? Because I didn't. Until I read it in The Guardian. The Guardian also had a great Thompson obituary by Ralph Steadman, for those who enjoy reading such things.)

Also what the world needs now is more combative interviews with people in power. Actual combative interviews. No interruptions mid-answer to yell things, but a "You didn't answer the question" after they're done speaking wouldn't be inappropriate. These come off well in print too.

I want it worked out to the point where there's an actual solution and then I want that solution to happen. Come on you fuckers. Some of you are smart.

I've got plans for things that are hatching like eggs in my brain as I type this but I really don't want the fruit of all my bluster to just end up as a zine.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1416055,00.html

U.S. soldiers who've fought in Iraq and Afghanistan can take ecstacy in order to combat post-traumatic stress. It's an experiment on the part of the FDA to see if it works, and American fighting forces get to be the guinea pigs.

It's funny that this this was in The Guardian (and it's kind of old news, I found it on the Arthur blog) and not an American newsource, but, well, yeah, there's probably reasons for that. I wonder what the reaction will be once people hear about it.

Oh and while I'm being political: Remember before the election when The New York Times reported that Bush was in a meeting with big donators and said his big thing following the election would be a move to privatize social security? And then the White House denied it, and most people didn't talk about it, but the fact that it was the New York Times (as everyone knows: A bastion for the American left. They're in New York. The "New" in the name has been replaced with "Jew.") was somehow taken as making it disreputable, not like it's the most respected paper in the nation or anything. And then, after Bush won the election, he started talking about "Social Security reform," i.e. privatization?

Next car with a bumper sticker that says "I don't trust the liberal media" is getting its tires punctured. And by next I think I mean "all of them forever." (What's funny is that the media really should be more liberal, what with it being filled with people who went to college and should be informed as to what's going on. That's why I find it funny when conservatives also talk about the liberalism of academia and college teachers: Dude, they're smart. They might be out of step with the rest of America, but they know what they're talking about when they are.)

Hunter Thompson died. I heard about it and just started contacting people I thought would care. My roommates were gone so I just called Star 69 and told the people who called the house last, while telling people over AIM. It was too much for me to really process, but I had to get it out. Then I walked the streets to tell other people in person, and on my way, I yelled the news to groups of people, who should've cared, but probably just thought I was insane.

It's weird to process things like this. I feel much the same way I did when ODB died, deaths that the news tends to bring out the insensitive "what-did-you-expect" side of people but I am deeply moved by. I'll feel better when the details come out. People who do shitloads of drugs but survive, and are entertaining about it, should live forever. Let's call it the Keith Richards rule, although if he were to die, I wouldn't give a shit. He's an old man. (Doing drugs doesn't kill people. Being awesome kills people.) Hunter Thompson was only 67. (He's the kind of guy that no matter how old he was, he would still only be that age.)

He also had a bit of that Johnny Cash old-man monument thing about him. These are people who live forever because they're old. But then they end up not living forever, as that is not how life works.

I wonder if there's a note, and I wonder how it reads if it exists, which is a weird thing to put on somebody.

I imagine cause of death having something to do with being in a house filled with guns while on drugs and seeing the things on the news. Which was the case for awhile. I don't know. When something's that inevitable, it seems like it'll be avoided after he's made it so long.

Reading other people's responses seem to postulate that he was just killing himself because that's the way he should die, rather than be claimed by old age, or cancer, which it seems likely he could've had.

I saw a documentary where he made plans for what to do after his death, to cremate him and fire his ashes in a rocket from a statue of a fist with two thumbs.

Um.

May he rest in peace.

I wrote something tonight which I'm going to work into a piece of literary criticism/music criticism for my independent contract. It's one sentence but it sums up a lot, serving as both a guide to life, a guide to writing, and an explanation for why I will never send my mom a short story of mine to read, despite the fact that such a gesture would mean a lot to her, regardless of the storie's content. (Another reason is that just the gesture would mean a lot to her, regardless of the story's content, so her judgements would mean nothing.) It's also a big key to an essay about Lifter Puller and The Hold Steady:

The trinity of debauchery of sex, drugs, and rock and roll that boring people like to think makes them interesting is but a poor substitute for the combo of sex, death, and blasphemy that's necessary for a story to even kind of matter.

If anyone can think of any exceptions to that rule, I'd like to hear them. I write this all the time but no one ever takes me up on it. And granted, I don't have a comments section, but I'm easy enough to get in contact with. I guess people might just think I'm being smug, but no, seriously: If there are flaws to my broad sweeping statement, point them out. The key is to define "blasphemy" really broadly, but I think that's fair, as it's a catch-all term.

I stopped reading The Plague, because it's really not very engrossing. Half-pathetic, because I was the one who put in on my syllabus, but there were books on all syllabuses I didn't finish. For example: Billy Budd is on my syllabus for my Saturday class, and I just don't think it's going to happen. Something Happened is compelling as anything though, despite the subject matter (upper middle-class people are unhappy) being both done to death and not particularly interesting. Alan Moore has said in the past disparaging things about the British literary canon, its inclination towards the comedy of manners because it was what the critics could relate to at the time, and there's a lot to this. But Something Happened is really good, and it's not like I don't read a lot of the other less critic-approved works.

Season three of Curb Your Enthusiasm destroys the previous two seasons, which I enjoyed but might have thought a bit overrated due to lack of laugh-out-loud moments. But season three is just... Ah. Golden.

Deerhoof are coming to Olympia in March, as is Bad Education. Yeah.

I wrote a piece about Vanilla Creme Frosted Mini-Wheats for the New Food Reviews section of the McSweeney's website. It was rejected, albeit politely. It's not genius or anything so the rejection's not that crushing. (although to be bitter about it: Right now in the new food reviews there's a thing about Pabst Blue Ribbon, which I mean come the fuck on) I'll run it here, so you can learn what I think about said breakfast cereal:

They're not as sickly-sweet as you imagine. After the quantum leap that occurs when you've taken a chunk of shredded wheat and made it agreeable by applying frosting, any other change is just going to be (metaphorical) frosting. So the addition of vanilla is more of a slight variation than an actual improvement, possibly the most subtle of changes to ever occur in a breakfast cereal. However, it's enough to give it something of an edge over normal Frosted Mini-Wheats, at least in my mind. There is the possibility that this opinion might just be my love of the smell of the bag talking. When one opens the plastic bag surrounding the cereal and breathes deep, they are overwhelmed with pleasantness. The aroma is that of the hair of a ex-girlfriend in dreams that are sort of about how you've thrown away every good thing you've ever had, but are mostly just about vanilla.

So it's coming up on 6 AM as I begin my typing, and I haven't gone to sleep. I'm awake, is what I am. Rather than try to get sleep, I'm going to catch an early bus and do some grocery shopping. I am going to weird up my mind.

But as of this moment, I am going to talk about records, like I'm nerdy and coked up at 6 AM and I just found out someone else at the party is really into The Mountain Goats too, wow, that's so awesome, YOU'RE so awesome.

Fucking Pitchfork and other people are making lists of the best records of the first half of the decade, a bad and gross idea in many ways (although funny in others, like when The Arcade Fire chart in the middle of the list when a month ago they were the best thing of 2004, ha ha ha) that I nonetheless feel the need to respond to. No rankings, just thoughts on music as they come to me.

First off Radiohead's Kid A, the default list-topper. It almost makes sense until you realize that two songs on it suck ass, they're sequenced right next to each other, and In Limbo isn't that great of a song either. Sorry kids but I'm just not that high. And I fucking got this record straightaway, or at least, you know, the good parts. It is indeed a very good record, but I mean shit.

Modest Mouse's The Moon And Antarctica is a better record, came out earlier the same year, and has many of the same moods, but expressed in a variety of different ways. It also has Third Planet on it. It's the work of people staying prolific as opposed to taking a few years off. I like thinking that the next Modest Mouse record will actually be their Kid A though, as they attempt to alienate all the fuckers that like the new record more.

Boredoms Vision Creation Newsun. Dude fucking Boredoms. Alex and I were talking about taking the cheapest form of transit down to California when they play in May. Fucking Boredoms dudes. Give it the fuck up. They own.

Lifter Puller's Fiestas And Fiascos came out in 2000, I just heard it thanks to John Darnielle being all "You have to hear this record, it's indie rock, you'll like it" and lyrically it kicks ass. It's got some flaws, like the one song where the one dude's all "yes yes y'all" but sometimes I feel the urge to say "yes yes y'all" just as a LFTR PLLR reference. There was some talk on the Last Plane To Jakarta forums about the best lyrics of 2004, and there were lots of Hold Steady quotes until someone said that going with Craig Finn is practically cheating, like people asking your favorite superhero and you say "God." I'm writing a paper about Craig Finn's lyrical acumen and power with fractured narratives kind of now.

The Mountain Goats- All Hail West Texas. No shit, people like his other stuff better? This one is kind of a no-brainer, I think, all lo-fi but a concept record so it gets a narrative going so shit hits harder. Source Decay is a great song, The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out Of Denton is a great song, Color In Your Cheeks... Most of this record is a dude with an acoustic guitar and a voice and a tape recorder, except one song has a MIDI keyboard. The phrasing of lines and the melodies is what puts this record all those other bullshit "listen to the lyrics" records, but I mean fuck: When shit is sparse, those lyrics have got to carry a lot of weight. This is a minimalist record for people who like lyrics.

The Wrens' The Meadowlands. No one I've met likes this like I do. My fondness for the sound of nineties indie rock is unstoppable. This is pretty much it in terms of being a nineties indie rock record. It ditches obtuse non sequiturs and a vibe of contentment for disappointment. It's kind of emo but it's kind of middle aged. Record deals and relationships all falling apart. If you have the inclinations towards that sound that no one is even making anymore, this is going to affect you. That it's going for being emotionally affecting, heartbreaking actually, just puts it all the more over-the-top for that mood.

Deerhoof: The most true thing of all the things on Pitchfork's list was Nick Sylvester saying that Deerhoof are the best band. Yeah they are. Holy God. Sadly at this point they haven't made the best albums, although I like Reveille more than the others because it nails their sound. But I saw them live too, and the drummer is a madman and the frontwoman is adorable and they just own. The only competition for best band is The Boredoms and Liars. Their lyrics are the most "lyrics don't matter" of all lyrics, ESL haikus about fictional creatures who kidnap children and take them to dreamland or something.

Liars: People talked shit on They Were Wrong So We Drowned but it still sounds like Liars to me. And Liars kick ass. The first record is kind of better. The Fins To Make Us More Fish-Like EP is better still. The rhythms persist as does Angus Andrews yelling shit. The shit he yells is what goes through my head when I want to impersonate crazy people. I like I like I like I like jai alai. The hallway ceiling, it's just four feet wide. I saw this thing in Magnet where they were asking people about how laws should be changed and the things that Angus said were this great combination of being smart and non-cliched. He had a five-point plan, which included things like benefits for people who don't own cars and only showing news made from a foreign perspective, and taxes for fast food like liquor and cigarettes are taxed. They compete with Deerhoof for being the best band, but their albums are better and more coherent.

McLusky: Rock music. They broke up now. Do Dallas is their best record, but I like a lot of their other stuff. They might've been one of the best bands if they were weirder, didn't break up, and I had seen them live. But they're all loud guitars and profane sarcastic lyrics and these are things that rock music should be.

Les Savy Fav are kind of like that too. But they didn't do anything as good as McLusky Do Dallas. Also: How did the Emor EP make an albums list?

Enon are friends of Les Savy Fav and have a dude from Brainiac in them. When I was talking about The Art Project I cited influences like Brainiac and Liars as things to aim for. Enon are like Brainiac only they exist right now and have this girl singer sometimes. Get The Letter Out is a fine fine song.

Daft Punk are shitty. I wanted to write about that earlier, but I got distracted. I also hate their respectability, from some people. They are trash. Much like the movie Orange County uses the song "butterfly" by Crazytown as a signifier that certain people are bad people and you have good reason to hate the world, Daft Punk is the soundtrack to a certain moment which I kind of had twice. I'm in the backseat of a car on a hot summer's day, got myself a headache. There are other people in the car who I am feeling alienated from and don't understand our friendship. The reason Daft Punk is the soundtrack is because that's what on the car stereo for real, exacerbating all my thoughts.

Microphones/Mirah: I think Advisory Committee is the best of all the records Phil Elvrum's involved with. Mount Eerie is good in that it's got all of his people on it, and feels like a big statement of purpose, but has moments of tedium like Kid A. If I really wanted to big up Olympia, I'd say Mount Eerie was the best record of the first half of the decade in that it's the best depiction of the Olympia community. It even includes people who suck! But Advisory Committee... Um, Mirah will pretty much forever be the sound of my freshman year at Evergreen, methinks. I like her voice, I like her songs. Her lyrics have this preoccupation with people coming and going and being missed which is the kind of thing that you can relate to when you're having yourself a freshman year at college and at the end of that year, a handful of the people you really liked (including the one who first lended you a copy of You Think It's Like This But Really It's Like This) move on. Also Mirah is from Philadelphia originally but then moved to Olympia and went to my college. Also I saw her live and talked to her. All of this is more biography than criticism, but yeah Advisory Committee gets big ups. Big fucking ups.

The Blow's Concussive Caress is really good too. So is the Poor Aim EP which most people haven't heard. I think that the Hit Factory album is going to blow the fuck up though. Seriously. Gonna' be huge. Get the hell out of the way of the volcano.

The White Stripes' White Blood Cells is yes. Yes yes yes. Not the what all rock music should be of McLusky, but it's what The White Stripes should be in a way that Elephant totally fucking wasn't.

I am swearing lots. You don't know how many times I've restrained myself. Profanity seems like the best way to talk about music, though. It's extreme and it simultaneously negates itself and doesn't need to be there while getting across a good deal of emotion that couldn't be expressed otherwise. Really, profanity is the linguistic equivalent of music, and that isn't even getting into the beauty that is inventing profanity combinations and swearing well, saying things like corpsefucker and dicksock and ass-fag.

Is This It was okay, you know. Okay.

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead's Source Tags And Codes really isn't as good as McLusky Do Dallas. I never even compared the two until just now, but there you have it. It's good though.

Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a thing of beauty. Better than anything else they've done. The only close comparison is Loose Fur, really.

I used to like Sonic Youth's Murray Street but I just listened to it again and wasn't feeling it so much. Still better than Sonic Nurse though by a good wide margin.

The Dismemberment Plan's Change has its moments, but not enough. The best are the ones that seem the moodiest, but there are all these songs that go for big hooks and end up sucking.

Animal Collective are rather good indeed. My interest in writing this list is waning.

The Beauty Pill put out some great stuff that no one bothered to hear.

As did Black Eyes. But these are two very different bands.

Both were on Dischord, home of Fugazi's The Argument which is the best thing they've ever done. I don't like it now as much as I did at the time I first heard it, but that doesn't mean it's not really fucking great.

Manitoba's Up In Flames, The Notwist's Neon Golden, first Shins record, Broken Social Scene's You Forgot It In People, Mouse On Mars' Idiology. Maybe there'll be a second post where I talk a lot about all of these things. The Mouse On Mars I should listen to more because I know that it's great, whereas the other things I've kind of overplayed. Manitoba Up In Flames was the best thing to come out in 2003 and in fact, made that year in music for me but looking back, there are other better records. It's just that they were less innovative. So Up In Flames wins the album of the year contest but there's times when I'd rather listen to McLusky or somesuch thing.

Also: rap music, I need to listen to Supreme Clientele more, but a lot of people are giving that praise and I'll just agree. I have this tendency not to respond to the genre as much as I respond to other things, as I'm sure you all know.

I totally won't write a follow-up to this, as most of the music I can say things about I did. Mainly I wanted to talk some shit and say some praise.

How sad is it that Dischord and K are pigeonholed and neglected? A lot of their stuff is shit, yes, but that's what gets the coverage and becomes the stereotype. I figure it's the regional label thing, which in many ways is a bad idea. But I mean: No one talked about Black Eyes (although they probably did in DC) and no one talked about The Blow outside of Olympia. This is music which largely denies the label's stereotype while at the same time no not at all. I shouldn't even be grouping these two entities in with one another. Whatever. The next Blow album should be huge and Black Eyes broke up already.

Oh and Matmos put out some great records, despite Drew Daniel liking Daft Punk and Bjork and not listening to Radiohead and generally, just listening to music wrong (this is sarcasm mostly) except for that made by his friends and a surprising diversity of tastes outside of the stuff he's most drawn too.

But mainly fuck music ranking. These are the best records in their respective micro-genres and moods. The mood I'm in most aren't even represented by any of this music though, which is kind of funny. Although maybe it's the Lifter Puller record.

Shitty thing about the Pitchfork list is how many good people they have access to didn't do a list. The new nineties list is more consistent because there are more good people and less total fucking tools. Also: there were other people doing similar lists but this bit's phrased as a Pitchfork response because generally they are the ones I most agree with, and have good people working for them, a confidence I don't have in many other things.

Oh and Destroyer's Streethawk: A Seduction was really good at what it did too.

I'm going to go buy groceries, I think.

Reading of The Plague isn't going so well. It's somewhat dull and my focus wanders. Camus was a dude who I was interested in reading more work by after The Stranger, but even that isn't the most interesting of books, and doesn't really suggest a great body of work. Still, I threw it on my independent contract reading list. I have to read Melville's Billy Budd for my Saturday class this week, and once I'm done with all that, I'm moving on to Heller's Something Happened, which I look forward to. This is all in addition to the fact that I should be tearing shit up with the writing.

I saw A Very Long Engagement. The criticism that most of the people are throwing against it is similar to the complaint people had about The Life Aquatic, in that it's bullshit complaints that people who are fans of the directors expect. This is not to say I liked A Very Long Engagement as much as The Life Aquatic... My mind wandered, there's a lot of plot and I didn't understand it all except in broad strokes. Frequently there were characters on-screen that I didn't know what their connection was to the other characters. Every shot in the film is beautiful. It's not as good as Delicatessen. There might be some problems that stem from the fact that the film's an adaptation of a book. Bad Education is playing at the Capital Theater later this month, and my hopes are high.

American Dad, the new cartoon from the creator of Family Guy, is fucking horrible. Take all the ham-fistedness and stupidity and attempted offensiveness of Family Guy, only apply it to politics instead of pop culture. Then drop the density of pacing and the occasional long go-nowhere anti-humor bits. I've said in the past that Family Guy was pretty funny, but the people who were really into it are bad people. I wonder what they think of this. It's really stupid, but it's also obviously terrible, and the politics are those of the left. (Family Guy seemed to attract a lot of right-wing fans. It just had a generally poorly-informed fanbase, and while this show doesn't seem particularly nuanced or informed- it's people who've come to similar conclusions as I but don't necessarily know all that I know- it does have viewpoints that the majority of America, and by my reckoning, the majority of Family Guy fans, don't share.) I can't imagine people liking it unless they are retarded. And if they're conservative, they'll be turned off, retardation or no.

Dave Hitchens and Alex Tripp both have given me positive reviews of the story I finished. This is comforting, to say the least.

I should be going to see A Very Long Engagement soon. Eagles are playing in the Super Bowl, and although I'll be watching a french film instead of the big game, I nonetheless hope for their success.

Oh the night we had. The day we had! The past twelve hours were some kind of amazing. In the afternoon, two of my roommates began tripping on DXM. During this time, I finished the paper that I have to hand in tomorrow, and made large amounts of headway on this short story I was writing, as I listened to Bright Flight by the Silver Jews and Beauty Pill's Cigarette Girl Of The Future EP. These were great albums for the mood I was attempting to get across. Soon I'll finish the short story, and I think I'll put Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea on the stereo. The last time I listened to such a record was, weirdly, the last time Alex did DXM, as I was in the room when it was on the stereo and Soul Calibur was on the television. Months ago.

But, Alex walked in as I was typing away my short story, and once the Beauty Pill EP was done, all of the good roommates who are currently living here went down to the beach. As we walked out the door, we heard the sound of a party that seemed like it was raging, like it might actually be a good party for the first time in Evergreen party. We continued to the beach. A group of people walked by and were all "where are you going? We're going to the PARTY!" and we laughed them off and made our way into the woods. There was a lot of comedic riffing on the walk. It was a good night for the woods, a good night for the beach, a far cry from the creepy vibes there've been in the past. There was some thought that the tide might be up, as the waves were loud. But no, that was not the case, and we stood on the beach and saw bright flashes like explosions in the sky in one isolated spot on the other side of Puget Sound. I stood on the beach, peed once, then sat on a branch for a while and wondered about what was going on. There was a moment where I counted off two thirty-six second intervals between the flashes, but once this was announced, the flashes occurred with less frequency. This added still more mystery to these things that the first thought out of our mouths said were UFOs. Before this attempted to find a pattern where there was none, I said that we should make piece with everything, and Alex said that it was a good night for it. And it was. I'm not really getting across the full extent of it, but there was a good feeling in the air. These are the nights of Neutral Milk Hotel (and the days of Animal Collective and Boredoms) and ending short stories that strive to communicate what it feels like to be connected with life.

Today I also read an amazing interview with Alan Moore about craft while listening to Alan Moore interview Brian Eno. This is mentioned, for those who know about Alan Moore and Promethea 12 and all that, as a prelude to the next bit.

A few nights ago Loren had his tarot cards read and the tower came up. The tower is being struck with lightning. This is what that feels like.

Today there were Netflix. We watched Mr. Show, laughed, and in doing so, got called racists by our new roommate who thought one bit went too far.

The bit in question was about Hitler clones becoming servants of Holocaust survivors as a reparation for the Holocaust.

It was hilarious. To us.

But to him? Offensive!

So we all got called racists. Including me, the Jew, and Evan, the Asian.

What minority is he, you ask? I didn't know. So I asked him if he was gay, or black. He said "No."

Then I pointed out that David Cross was Jewish. He maintained that the skit was racist.

Later on, during another Mr. Show skit, there was a reference to the Vonnegut novel Hocus Pocus. Alex said it was the only Vonnegut novel he had read. To which the new roommate replied "Not even Catcher In The Rye?"

So we set him on fire.

We also watched Dead Leaves, described by someone on the internet as the most bugfuck anime ever. It can also be described as next level shit. It's coherent kind of, in that it's largely a vehicle for extremely well-animated (but bugfuck insane!) violence propelled by annoying characters who you're supposed to think are badass for their attitude. It's poorly written. But it's good in the way that extremely violent japanese animation should be. It delivers on a certain level. Asking the characters to not be annoying as hell is almost asking too much, especially when you're asking for something to meet the incredibly vague criterion of being next-level shit. Dear lord, was it fun. I enjoyed it the most when none of the characters were talking, and they didn't really talk that much. It's the kind of violence that makes you giggle and go "holy shit" and "fucking awesome" to your friends that you watch it with. People who are into shit like Dragonball Z but not shit like Dead Leaves (like our new roommate, coincidentally) should be shot on principle.

Was the best thing about that last sentence how I used two different meanings of shit to prove my point and expected the reader to just read along and know what I meant by my tone, or when I talked about how my new roommate should be shot?

I or someone else I live with really needs to buy floor soap because right now I'm just mopping with hot water which isn't doing shit and the mop is getting mildewy and spreading mildew around is probably worse than the peedrops that hang out around the front of the toilet.

This is one part note to myself, one part note to roommates, but I think it's a pretty accurate representation of my life and how I live it to those reading elsewhere.

Finished reading the Marquez but already wrote my comments in a letter and it would be cheap to reuse. Let it be known (throughout the land!) that I have read Marquez and am smart and literate and have a dick the size of a damned canoe. And maybe I can't compete with the people who've read Dostoevsky and have dicks the size of yachts, but surely I'm better than all those people who only read Tom Clancy and have dicks the size of vaginas.

Two nights ago, Alex, Loren, and I attempted to write/practice the music to another Art Project song. I felt really strongly about the theories behind it, and I'll maintain the component parts were solid. When combined it all went horribly awry and sounded like utter shit. I kind of don't know where it all went wrong, although I'm placing most of the blame on my shitty guitar line. (Part of the idea was that I'd write a guitar line and perform it... And although I said earlier that the component parts were strong, and people were all "it's kind of Pixies-ish" and understood that it was meant to be angular and dissonant it really was the weakest element...) Deterred? Yeah, kind of, but... I don't know, I stand by a lot of it and hopefully the whole thing will be completed by the end of the week. The fact that I am an idea guy and the Art Project is an idea band I think gives us an edge over other ventures headed up by non-idea people.

Also to be completed by the end of the week: Short story I'm writing now, (current title is For Those Who Lived It) some kind of essay for my Saturday class, One Hundred Years Of Solitude, and maybe maybe Camus' The Plague. Got a hundred pages of Marquez to finish tomorrow and then I'll enter Camus country, but that book is considerably thicker than The Stranger.

February 24th is Mt. Eerie and The Evens (Ian Mackaye's new band) at Eagles Hall for $5.

Oh and the YACHT dude what did The Blow Poor Aim EP much beloved around these parts will be doing her next full-length too, and it'll be called Hit Factory or somesuch wacky thing. And apparently the next Sleater-Kinney record will sound different from their other stuff. It's their Sub Pop debut and produced by Dave Fridmann. The Low Sub Pop debut that Dave Fridmann produced is kind of alright.

Here at headquarters we are excited by the leaks of the new Prefuse 73 and Books albums. If I end up talking to Phil Elvrum at that show I will either encourage him to collaborate with the Books or just tell him my weird logic comedy bit about how I imagine live shows with Bill Gates in his band on weather-controlling device. None of these things will go over well probably but if we don't try to ingratiate ourselves to people based on little more than how nice it would be were we in their good graces, there would be no more human reproduction.

And now you're all "well sure Brian I suppose that that is technically true but that is talking about male-female interaction, and does not really apply to nerd-musician interaction at all really" and then I guess I have to be like "well shit shit I guess it's ego and the constant urge to be validated but do I go to your work and slap the dick out of your mouth?" and then you walk away shocked at the completely unnecessary rage that you provoked, but hey you know what: if any of you were prostitutes I probably would slap the dick out of your mouth and say "HEY! You're better than that, you don't have to suck cock for money" and you'd be all "Wow asshole, way to run my life, I don't come to your work/house and slap the dick out of your mouth" and then I'd be offended, because I mean fuck, I was just trying to show some concern, and I don't see how that makes me a whore.

It is late in the evening, in case you couldn't tell. Oh and if I talk to Ian MacKaye I will talk to him about the bands Horses and Flowers, formed by dudes who used to be in Black Eyes. I will do this because I imagine many people have already asked about the next Fugazi record and if he heard the new Soft Pink Truth record and if so what did he think of the Minor Threat cover, but who asks about Black Eyes? No one, probably, but that could be me thinking my thoughts are special thoughts when they are in fact not special thoughts.

Luckily for these people I probably will not end up talking to them, but will instead sit around making jokes about the other people at the show who I don't know with the small circle of people at the show that I do know.

Oh boy sleep, that's where I'm a viking, and by viking, I of course mean "person who has sex."

Goddamn right this is a character assassination just because I usually am just all "records I downloaded for free and didn't pay for weren't very good" doesn't mean I can't let loose with the vaguely comedic self-loathing when 3 AM rolls around.

More tales of bad roommate interaction, or, how to tell if someone is useless.

They say things like "I don't judge someone by their opinions."

They have bad, poorly-thought-out political opinions, esp. the kind that lead to not voting in favor of advocating anarchy.

They hate The Daily Show, and enjoy the comedy stylings of Denis Leary.

When asked who their favorite member of the Wu-Tang Clan is, they become confused and say "I'm not familiar with that group." This is a question, by the way, of which most answers would be acceptable. "Method Man" is really the only wrong answer that someone might actually say. Even joke answers are acceptable, even if they are only made out of not knowing what you're talking about.

They express anger at the idea of inside jokes, even when faced with things that aren't inside jokes so much as they are conversational prompts, i.e. "Who's your favorite member of the Wu-Tang Clan?"

They don't get jokes, even of the non-inside variety. Except, I suppose, those that Denis Leary make.

Denis fucking Leary.

Also: fucking Megadeath.

They say "this doesn't look like meat" when looking at falafel.

They talk about TV and how to watch it is American, or something.

Most of what they say doesn't really make any sense but seems like something someone dumb would say. This is the most golden of all rules in terms of judging someone as useless. If you need a concrete example of what I mean by this, think "I don't judge someone by their opinions."

There is a new roommate living with us. He is a total goddamn mook.

"He spilled barbecue sauce in the kitchen, and really, I think that's just a metaphor for the whole situation, him living here."- Loren

"DRAGONBALL Z IS THE WORST SHIT EVER" - Alex, on AIM, later said by Loren in real life.

"Is college life like Animal House?"- The Mook, to Alex.

He wants to make the drum kit bigger. We're not sure whether or not he listens to Hoobastank, but we haven't ruled out that that could definitely happen.

He makes me uncomfortable, a sentiment that other people echoed, but was kind of undefined. The kind of uncomfortable you shouldn't have in your own home. All the esoterica and layers of irony that I take for granted that my roommates will understand I can't talk about for fear of having to explain. Kind of the same thing I felt when I lived with my parents, but worse because now there's other people around that I actually want to talk to.

He is dumb. "Dyslexic means backwards" he says, referring to Mega Man controls, after he said they were dyslexic.

He asked if people were into medieval reenactments in such a way that suggested that he is into them.

He saw that we had a Twin Peaks boxset and talked about it in terms of being an old show on ABC he never got into, rather than even kind of suggesting he knows who David Lynch is.

He writes screenplays, a fact which makes me think of the fictional Donald Kaufman rather than my "I'd like to write and direct my own films but I don't know how to direct" stance. He has a collection of Dragonball Z tapes, in case that wasn't made clear earlier.

This is an unpleasant development and we all want him to leave. Goddamn, there's enough drama as is without passive-aggressiveness thrown in. I desperately want to just be able to turn into that loud obnoxious self I get yelled at for being just so I can make it clear that we don't like him and don't want him around because we don't feel like we can be ourselves around him. Until then maybe people will pee/ejaculate into his shampoo.

There was a time where I had to define the term "mook" for Loren. When I did this, I came to the conclusion that mooks are the bane of my existence. Now Loren knows all too well the precise meaning of the word.

In other better news, Alex got on Netflix. That'll be rad.

Although, watching things that are funny/weird around people who don't get them? That is hell. It's fucking hell and I'm going to have to ignore it's the hell I'm living in right now.

So, this post is going to come off as nerdy, as it's about comics. But, if you view it as a metaphor for life, the implications are staggering.

Went to the comic shop today. I'd been planning that the next time I'd go would be two weeks from now. I'd pick up the last issues of three comics, then walk out, and not return for a year. Disengage from the medium, and the culture that surrounds it. Stop seeking out things that are new that I might like but probably won't. Wash my brain out. The culture surrounding comics is fairly disgusting, and from the outside it just seems nerdy, but from the inside it seems psychologically damaged. So to get away from all that... Ah. It would also save me some money. Which I could use, you know, to pay off student loans, and not be in debt until I die.

But I went today, and added some things to my pull list for the future.

And really, this is an idea that's been in my mind for a while, but it seemed like the near future would be the only clean break for the foreseeable future.

So, why?

Obviously, sometimes it's pleasurable. Sometimes the actual work is fucking amazing, life-changing stuff. Not frequently. It's frequently disappointing, but the same can be said for music or movies or whatever. It's fucking insane to do what I was thinking about doing, because it's a medium like any other, and it would be absurd to go without music or movies for a year.

Granted, the thing with music and movies is that to disengage from them would be to disengage from pretty much all conversation with friends. Music and movies make up the majority of my conversation, and this blog. No one I hang out with on a regular basis reads comics though, so it's not like that'd be an issue there.

But, you know, I do know people who read comics, and I meet them, and... It's a good thing to share. It's a small hobby, and there's a certain degree of something there. The small insular attitude is one of the things that disgusts me, but when you meet someone who's down, that's a great moment. And it happens in Olympia. Plus, there's the discussion and the criticism online, which, again: FREQUENTLY HORRIBLE, but is also home to many a smart and funny person.

The reason I wanted to disengage is because it's, in many ways, too much fucking effort to engage to a full level, a level greater than I'm currently at. There's a lot of masterworks to read, and if you want to do that, it's really fucking expensive. Then there's the steady stream of that which gets hype, and to engage that, is really fucking expensive. And to attempt to be on the forefront of something and find out about something and spread the word... That takes money as well. And it takes time. It takes a fuckload of time.

But to disengage from any kind of anything because what you want to do is engage it more than you easily can is fucking nonsense, completely counter-intuitive. And yeah, to engage it is to let it damage you, to put wrinkles on your brain that you'd rather not have. But you fucking deal, because otherwise, what the fuck are you doing?

I'm writing this with a bravado that I don't really have. Part of me regrets that I could've made a clean break. A lot of the work is boring and the spending money on work that's boring blows. This is just the part of my brain that is thinking logically trying to convince the other part of my brain that is also thinking logically. One part's romantic while the other is cynical, but both are functioning properly. There are no misfires. There's work in the future that will inevitably be worth reading, just as there has been in the past. (Not the recent past, which is really the issue... The last time I was really excited by comics was the summer) To ignore it would be to say "fuck you, happiness!" in favor of, you know, mental health. Like mental health has ever been a friend of mine. It hasn't.

Fuck mental health.

My wisdom teeth are coming in at an angle. I don't remember what the dentist had to say when he looked at my x-rays. I remember it not cohering in my mind, and it seemed like they might have been speaking to soon. The plan was for them to be removed over Christmas break, but I would've had to have made the appointment before then, which I didn't know until I brought it up to my mom, and so, the teeth remain. The angle they're coming in at doesn't impact my other teeth, but it does scrape against my mouth.

The nearest oral surgeon is in Bellevue. I can't get there, probably. Alex went in for his teeth not too long ago, it seemed pretty shitty. They gave him weak drugs then insisted they were strong. I can't swallow a pill because I am nine. Every time I tell this to people, they try to tell me how to swallow a pill. I know how to do it in theory. But: Maybe if I were to go, they would give me liquid painkiller? I know of only one liquid painkiller. It is very strong. Still: I can't get to the dentist, so it's a moot point.

Damns but I need to buy some things. Books, for one. Clothing, for another. A wallet. A can opener. The griddle I bought in September is warped.

Halfway through One Hundred Years Of Solitude. I am bothered by lack of themes of any tangibility, besides reoccuring traits in family, which is really not the most interesting thesis. The style's competent, there's a lot of characters. I don't know how I feel about it. I wish there were things going on thematically that I cared about.

Last night I worked out the story I'm writing currently, all the way through until the end, so the plot can actually do what I want to put forth. The teacher I'm having this contract with will probably not enjoy it... Protagonists are young people and they go around doing young people things.

Philadelphia football team's going to the Super Bowl. I doubt they will win. But I am rooting for them. I won't watch though. Unless. The Super Bowl can just be an excuse to eat buffalo wings and drink. Then other people will be down. The Oscars didn't nominate Eternal Sunshine for anything of note, and the categories it's nominated for it won't win. The only thing I like that will win any Oscars will be The Incredibles. The Oscars are shit. They don't get their own paragraph because I think of them much in the same way I think of the Super Bowl. I know that Oscar parties exist, but I don't know what they're like like I know what Super Bowl parties are like. I figure there's less beer and more wine. I imagine everyone just sits around being old and boring. Year-end best-of lists are better than awards because there's a smaller probability of being full of shit. And year-end best-of lists are always TOTALLY FULL OF SHIT.

Hotmail expanded it's mailbox size not too long ago, so now it is absurdly big. I tend not to delete things as is, and this encourages that policy. I haven't deleted the e-mail exchanges I had with my last professor, in order to remind myself of what a truly evil fucker he was. Of course, the stuff I wrote, the amusing stuff, is gone. And his evil fucker stuff... It's like the banality of evil kind of thing. I'm not saying he's the kind of guy who'd vote for Hitler, because he is liberal. So with his liberalism established, I think that he might be the kind of guy who'd join a cult and allow his daughter to be raped by the cult leader. Either way, his e-mails, which were incredibly unhelpful and pretty much always bullshit, remain undeleted. You know, for laughs. Sooner or later I'm going to come across those again and delete them, because why dwell on that shit? But for now, they remain undeleted. It's an inevitability that they will be gone someday, when I decide to improve my life and become a better person.

Also: The drumkit in my living room is a terrible hellbeast. Drums are not very interesting in general, but rock drumming, in isolation, without any kind of polyrhythms or time changes or any kind of anything... Hoo, it is wearing. And loud. Loud as fuck and dull as grass growing. There are also sometimes songs that are played. Better in theory because it's not drum solos, but the same set of six (?) songs gets practiced every day. They are not very good songs. They are dull like drum solos, but with more going on.

God, but my Saturday class is shit. Fuck. My independent contract remains brilliant in theory but slow-going in practice. I wrote a thing about the John Barth book. I still need to do more fiction, but I am stalled and lacking in new ideas.

This is probably mean-spirited and in poor taste, but you knew that coming in. It's funny to talk to someone who should be healthier than you because they are a vegan and do yoga and whatnot, but they aren't, because they've taken so many downers that poo no longer flumes out their asspipe.

In other news: Don't you hate when you order a book off Half.com and it's mostly fine except that one short story is all done up with annotations and marginalia, written in ink? Probably not, because I'm the only one who is bothered by such things. But man, that was disappointing.

Speaking of disappointing: I read Leo Tolstoy's Death Of Ivan Ilyich for Saturday class. In a word: Shit. Granted, "shit" is a bit harsh for most things, but I was just summarizing up in one word. A more long-winded response would be to call it dull. It's not very good.

A copy of Don DeLillo's Underworld arrived in my mail today. That book is large.

I ordered a copy of Lifter Puller's Soft Rock off Half.com. I guess I really like that band.

Oh: Erin Tustin read and enjoyed some short stories I sent her. Oh sure, she's a "friend of mine" and as such she's "biased." Look, I'm not saying my stories are "good." I'm saying that her words of praise made me feel good on the inside, although to call it praise might be a bit hyperbolic.

Oh oh oh: People I was in AP English with in high school, before I got kicked out! Remember when that teacher-bitch-lady taught us advanced tricky literary terminology she told us would be on the AP test? And everybody had to learn them and it was a real pain-in-the-ass? And then the words totally weren't on the test at all? Yeah, remember that? Well: Said teacher lady was pronouncing at least one of those words WRONG. The word in question is "synecdoche," and it's not pronounced in a way that even kind of brings to mind a feminine hygiene project. It's pronouned "sin-ek-duh-kee." Jesus fuck, did we have some dumbass English teachers at that school. I mean, some of the other teachers were alright, I guess. But the English ones were pretty goddamn terrible. Because I mean: They speak English. In retrospect, the fact that they were such horrible fascists regarding literature and its interpretation doesn't strike me as being nearly as bad as their inability to speak the language, their misuse and mispronunciation of words. Oh, and that they were fascists about that. That pisses me off too. You know, when I think about it, which is blessedly kind of rare. Granted, at college I had a teacher who insisted on multiple occasions that the idea of having sound health refers to one's ability to cross a sound of water.

Generally speaking, I find the idea of homeschooling abhorrent, (and for reasons besides the whole social skill thing) especially for kids in their later years, because there's no way the parents know that much (especially when you take into account all the narrow-mindedness and biases that accompanies most parents who make such a decision, whether it be fundamentalist Christianity or hippie bullshit). There's a reason why high school teachers are so niche-oriented: because no one retains all that information. Still, the idea of taking your kids out of school for a subject you know better than their teachers is tempting.

I just finished reading John Barth's End Of The Road. I'll be writing some piece of criticism on it for class, but as of right now: Holy living fuck, that was great. The characters are all really unlikeable, but they felt real to me. Yeah, I'll write more elsewhere, but let me state now that it's a really good book, I only mention that the characters are unlikeable bastards as a caveat for a recommendation. And it starts off a little bit slow before it gets going. Still. I finished it in less than twenty-four hours. First novel I've done that with since The Catcher In The Rye, maybe. Partly that's the schedule I'm on, I decided to wrap it up, and it's not a very long book, and I'm probably forgetting something... Now that I think about it I think I had to read Their Eyes Were Watching God really quickly for class. Still. When it gets going, it goes, and when it ends, it breaks fucking teeth. I thought Barth got lumped in with the post-modernists, but that's... It's a novel in the classic mold, really. Whatever. I'll write criticism later... Probably tomorrow, actually.

I also finished Gilbert Hernandez' Palomar today. Lot of characters in that one, and once Beto gets into his idiom, when he did Poison River, things take on levels of density and each panel starts telegraphing more than my brain can process when there's that many characters involved. Other people call it a masterpiece. I think I'd like it more if I were smarter and could process all the information being thrown at me. I guess it peaks with the Duck Feet/Human Diastrophism stories. It's a lot to process.

And the next thing on my self-assigned reading list is 100 Years Of Solitude, which has a ton of characters too, but they're identified by name rather than drawings, and there's a chart and the beginning, so maybe I'll be able to work it out. Before that though, is Tolstoy's Death Of Ivan Ilyich, for the class I take on Saturdays. Plus trying to write coherent praise for The End Of The Road. I don't know who I'd recommend it to, really. As I read it, it struck me that Alex might dig it. But that's it. Mainly I'll just say that I really liked it, and go on the record as that being my opinion.

I just finished Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End Of The World. I can't say I enjoyed it too much, although the fact that I read it quickly says something about it's quality. It's more of a genre piece than I usually read, splitting its time between cyberpunk and fantasy. My interest in these genres is kind of nonexistent. This isn't to say that's all there is, and the other stuff that is there is what I found myself more attached to. Although at the same time: Some of those things are themes that are at least kind of addressed in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Well, one theme is shared: Split worlds and fictional realities. It's explored more in Hard-Boiled Wonderland, but more vaguely defined in Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. I can't really recommend it. Which is weird: I expected to like it more, as the more weird and fantastic elements in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle are what I responded to. Although perhaps I was responding to the contrast and dichotomy of that with the reality presented in that novel. I don't know how I'd respond to a piece like Norwegian Wood, which is supposedly completely grounded and goes for being emotionally affecting rather than being a novel of ideas. I might get around to reading that at some point. For now, my flirtation with Murakami is over, although Wind-Up Bird Chronicle remains really fucking good.

I've got myself an independent contract. I've got to do a lot of writing, essentially. Thirty pages of fiction, twenty pages of criticism. By the end of the quarter. This will be tricky. I'm also reading some books. I finished Franz Kafka's Amerika. It would be better if it were finished. There's fragments that Kafka wrote which aren't included in my printing. If they're in other editions, I'll be kind of pissed. The Trial wasn't finished either, but The Trial's incomplete fragments cohere and don't leave out major events. Amerika is a little bit funnier towards the end, but a lot less compelling on the whole. It's acceptable if you like Kafka. I can't quite recommend it.

Hey, the new Caribou record leaked. Caribou is what Manitoba is called now that he's been sued by the frontman of an old punk band who has not released any albums under a name that even included the word Manitoba. The worst thing about the record is that it's coming out under the name Caribou. Which would probably be the case even if the album didn't totally kick ass. Wow. Dan Snaith said this album wouldn't have the whole indie vibe of Up In Flames, but it totally does. There's also a hip-hop influence and a krautrock influence, yes, but mainly... It's pretty indie. It all coheres into one sound, though. Or at least a coherent vibe throughout. It is kind of great. It's a little less psych-pop, I suppose, but my roommate Thor still said that Manitoba was one of the most psychedelic things he'd ever heard. I hope for a Caribou/Animal Collective collaboration at some point. Anyway: The album's called The Milk Of Human Kindness. Two of my roommates plan to buy it on vinyl the day as soon as it becomes available. I plan to buy it, and any accompanying singles/EPs once I'm in a place that's not Olympia.

The Bloc Party full-length's alright. They're a band that's like Gang Of Four in 2oo5 but not shitty like those other bands that people compare to Gang Of Four for no apparent reason. When I say this, I am saying that they are better than Franz Ferdinand, which is to say I'm saying nothing at all. The album's alright.

I watched Hard Eight again tonight. That's a fine film. I'd forgotten a lot of it. I like P.T. Anderson a lot. Got in an argument with roommates about whether you can be said to like P.T. Anderson and not like Magnolia. For now, I'm maintaining no, on the basis that I feel that Magnolia is the most P.T. Anderson of all the films he's made. It's long, so it's just more P.T. Anderson. It's ambitious in scope, and it's personal to the film-maker. Granted, if someone said the clever line "I like P.T. Anderson a lot, but I don't like Robert Altman, hence I don't like Magnolia," I might not concede my point but I would laugh at that joke because it is clever.

I'm also listening to M.I.A. which I like okay, although it's not the kind of thing I get into. Music's like pop-hip-hop vaguely in the vein of Missy Elliott or something but she's British and skinny. (In many ways I am probably downplaying my enjoyment of the record when I say shit like that. I like the record but I'm not going apeshit over it, shall we say, because it's not in a genre I respond to in a way that I go apeshit over.) But: I did go over to her website, http://www.miauk.com, and her art is pretty fucking cool. Graffitti type stuff and leftist politics and... It looks cool and some of it's offensive. Bundles of dynamite are a reoccuring image. The video for the single... I haven't seen all of it yet. She dances to a background of animated imagery that ties together explosions and spraypaint, graffitti stencils of tanks, and mushroom clouds forming black power fists. So... interesting.

Also: I bought The Believer issue with the DVD and the art profiles... Some of those L.A. artists are rather cool and make me regret that I never went to any of the art openings in Philadelphia. The DVD is pretty solid as well. Money kind of well-spent, although the Raymond Pettibon interview is kind of a letdown. I like art, and I wish I knew more about it, had my finger on the pulse. The only thing I can say in my defense is that no one else knows anything about modern art either. (the good kind... The kind that looks cool and isn't avant-garde and conceptual. Is it reductive and over-simplifying to say that stuff is crap and boring? Yes, yes it is, but at the same time: Fuck man, I can come up with concepts and ideas. That's not very hard. I've done it: If anyone wants to give me gallery space and pay me I'll show them to you. I can't draw things with any degree of competency. This is the kind of argument I base around phrases like "fuck John Cage." Fuck John Cage.) Evie said she had a friend in art-school whose work comes off like show flyers, and although meant in at least a kind of degrading way: That's not a bad vibe to working off of. This is not to say that painting isn't awesome either, but... Sadly the last few paintings I've seen by people I know, including my brother, were leaving me flat. Still: these paintings weren't made by professionals. I don't know. Familiarity breeds contempt. There's a lot of art out there I'm not familar with. I like things that look cool, and that's my basic description of what I want out of art because I am five years old. (I also like leftist politics and extremist imagery if that makes me seem somewhat more discerning. Which, really, it shouldn't, because art should probably be judged more on aesthetic grounds than ideological ones... This is the kind of argument I base around phrases like "fuck punk rock.")

I am rambling like shit. I have class tomorrow. Do people still read this anymore? Did everyone give up once I realized that my life was boring and I just started talking about books, movies, and music instead?

I am sleepy and I'm mainly talking for the theoretical enjoyment of a nonexistent audience. Goodnight.

Woke up hot and thirsty slightly before 5 AM. I've got class at 9 on a Saturday...

I didn't post what was going on with school, did I?

I didn't get in. I might be kind of fucked. I'm going to try to take a Saturday class for four credits. This isn't enough for financial aid and housing, so I'm going to try to get an independent contract for anywhere from 4-16. I don't know if that'll work because it's late in the game. Maybe I'll be fucked and maybe things will work out okay.

I guess I thought I was going to blog about music criticism and stuff. I hope to write some decent pieces for the contract. There's the beginning of a piece about Lifter Puller/The Hold Steady on my computer now. I was going to type up something now about rockism and how it relates to pop/hip hop. I will simply present the facts now and not try to work them into a coherent whole: In recent months, I've seen two musical performances on Saturday Night Live by two different acts whose major singles are produced by the Neptunes. One of which was grotesque in its not-even-kinda-being-played-live-ness. Drums just don't fucking sound like that. The other was considerably more interesting visually, and deviated from the album version and was being played with real live instruments. These two acts will remain unnamed. But: the second, less artificial performance was of a song that got some critical acclaim from rock critics, while the former artist is viewed as a joke about shitty hip-hop that's overly poppy. The reason the two are unnamed is to separate the invested from the not-so-much. Really, you can work this out in your head if you even kind of want to.

Right now I'm listening to the LCD Soundsystem full-length. Long story short is that it's better than The Rapture's Echoes. When it ends I'm going back to bed.

I didn't get into the class I wanted to get into. I wasn't even wait-listed, which was something of a surprise. Apparently there was something I needed to click on in order to stay wait-listed. As it stands currently, I'm not registered for anything. And the class I want to get into isn't letting in new people. There's been some talk of a group contract for all the rejected, where we'll just ape the syllabus. The syllabus, as previously discussed, is pretty solid. However, tonight? Tonight I've been assigned a short story by Joyce Carol Oates to read, Faithless.

In high school I threw around the word "pretentious" a lot. Not as much as some of my friends, who would call Nathaniel Hawthorne pretentious. But: Joyce Carol Oates is pretty goddamned pretentious. At least she is in this short story. There's sentences like "Voice mixed with dreams, and the wind."

It's bad. It's not good. Joyce Carol Oates. Let this be a warning. Avoid her writing.

You know what is good? That Pavement Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain reissue. Hot damn. Also: Lifter Puller's Fiestas And Fiascos.

So that's music one, short stories zero.

Writing is for lllllooooooosssssseeerrrs.

The short story I'm writing now has this tendency towards internal rhyme that I wish I could avoid, but I can't. This one tries for this kind of clever denseness, and writing things that read well because of their meter ends up rhyming a large portion of the time involuntarily. It's kind of good and it's probably able to read it without thinking it's rhyming all the time, but it's there. Still. I like it more than my other stuff because it gets away from traditional short story tropes. I also like it more than my other stuff because I'm writing it right now, so there's a certain amount of freshness to it.

But I should go back to reading this terrible short story.

This is one of those scenarios where the people who care already know, and the people who don't care won't know. Will Eisner is dead. When I saw the news, I uttered the word "shit" instinctually.

Shit.

Rest in peace.

Back in Olympia. I have a decent amount to talk about, kind of, in that if I had access to a computer I would've written about a ton of shit. But instead, I'll just talk about movies.

I saw House Of Flying Daggers today, with my dad. And let's just say I have no interest in seeing Hero. It's got some moments... There's a fight scene with bamboo that owns Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon's fight scene with bamboo. The ending scene cuts away to a shot of soldiers that imply a BIG FIGHT on the horizon that never comes because the ending scene tells the story the director wanted to tell, and a battle between the House Of Flying D aggers and the government isn't the focus of the story... It's just the setting where all of the plot points come from. Well, not all of the plot points. Most of them. At least one comes from the love story that is, I guess, the story's plot. There's also CGI shots of daggers and arrows going through the air. No wire-fighting, though.

New year's eve I saw The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou. Which... it's really very good. Weird in that the reviews seem to miss the point of Wes Anderson... For fuck's sake, he's NOT ABOUT the set design. I mean, he likes it. But that's not what his stories are about, ever, and that includes this one. The most important thing about this movie, moreso than how awesome everything looks, (and it does look awesome, and if you try to hold that against the movie, you're a dick) or the artifice of moviemaking, (there's some moments that are intentionally over-the-top but I took them at face value, it's a goddamn movie and the over-the-top moments are good ones, awesome ones, tongue in cheek or no) is the characters. Which should be fucking obvious for people who've watched Wes Anderson movies before. This is another one of those movies that's an ensemble piece where every character has reasons and emotions and is sympathetic. There are also stop-motion crazy-looking crabs and seahorses. The set design is amazing. But the only way that should get in the way of your enjoyment is if it's all your paying attention to, because you're a dumb fuck. Okay, yes, movie critics: It's an easy criticism to throw at Wes, that all he cares about is art direction, especially in this movie, where the visuals are so much more intentionally spectacular. Whatever. I figure people will get over their complaints the more they watch it. The first time they watch it, they see the easy jokes and the set design. Which is a surface reading, and is really the main thing you pick up the first time through most Anderson movies. The second time the characters come through more and the smaller stuff is funnier. This is true for pretty much all of his movies, yes?

The night before I watched The Life Aquatic, I saw The Harryhausen Chronicles, which got me psyched on stop-motion. Stop-motion's so goddamn awesome. I prefer it to CGI in terms of interaction with live-action. Harryhausen points out that one the cool things about stop-motion is that it doesn't look perfect, and this aspect is what lends a dream-like quality as it interacts with real people. Makes sense. The Harryhausen Chronicles is pretty great, a documentary about Ray Harryhausen. His work is so time-consuming, and he has all of these unfinished projects, which might be sad for him, but is amazing as a testament to the man's creative powers.

I saw Anchorman on DVD, which was pretty damn funny. I saw the uncensored version, but there's not a lot there that would've needed to be cut... One scene. I didn't get to see the bonus disc with another feature-length movie on it, but that's probably pretty great. The commentary track's kind of funny: The movie itself is rarely addressed, and the commentary features people not involved with the movie in any way. Like Lou Rawls. Awesome.

My brother also rented the SNL best of Christopher Walken, which is a weird thing to exist. The more recent seasons are kind of over-represented (cowbell sketch is one thing, other stuff is considerably weaker) but they still leave out the thing where Walken is a doctor and Will Ferrell is a patient with a badger in his ass. But there is a brilliant sketch I'd never seen before with Tim Meadows as a census-taker, which I highly recommend.

Other comedies include The Jerk, which I had never seen. Do I need to say that the Jerk is good? I don't think I do.

My brother wanted me to watch Freaked, and holy living christ is that a bad comedy. Wow. Made in 1993. The funniest part of it is Bobcat Goldthwair, doing schtick not entirely dissimilar to his character on Unhappily Ever After. Mean-spirited frat boy garbage. A character wears a Red Hot Chili Peppers shirt... My brother's current girlfriend has fond memories of watching it on USA Up All Night. I seriously can't imagine someone finding this funny. You know the episode of South Park with the title Do The Retarded Go To Hell? To find this movie funny you'd have to be both retarded and soulless. That's a twofer of going to hell.

Cannibal! The Musical is pretty funny. A lot less cannibalism than you'd expect. Actually I'm not so sure this one was funny, but I laughed at it once or twice at parts I can't remember. It's enjoyable. Unlike Freaked.

I finally saw Eraserhead, and I laughed more at Eraserhead than I did at Freaked. This is to say it got out like three small exhalations of air that were faintly laughter-like. Eraserhead isn't mind-blowing. It's very "arty." It had moments I liked. Not the best David Lynch, and probably not even important to see in terms of his overall work... Really, I think of the main body of work being everything from Blue Velvet on. Eraserhead is a long student film and Dune and The Elephant Man are done to get paid.

The Saddest Music In The World is kind of dull. It's stylistically interesting and it's got some funny moments, but at one point I looked over to see that my brother's girlfriend had fallen asleep, and that made a lot of sense to me. It's not a bad movie, but I wouldn't recommend seeing it to most people.

I watched Cinema Paradiso and didn't dig it. Although I realized in the middle of it that Evie was in France and that I had forgotten about this completely the time I called her to bitch about New Jersey. A dumb thought, but that conversation would've hit upon an obvious contrast that being in France is considerably preferable to being in one's parent's house in New Jersey.

The reasons for winter break being kind of weak will not be discussed here, for now I am back in Olympia were such things don't matter that much to me. I don't need the therapy. I figure movie reviews might actually be helpful to people.

Although: My brother's house, where I spent my second week, is unheated. Because of this, it is very cold.

Briefly: Being back in New Jersey is much how I expected it, awkward and boring. The room that I stay in is generally occupied by someone who my mom has unofficially adopted, so the room is filled with the belongings of this person who I find objectionable and unpleasant. When in the room I know where to look down, what things to turn a blind spot to. I, like my mom, get to selectively edit reality and it sucks. I really just can't do it. I'm wishing to be back in Olympia where I have books and friends and can say "fuck" as frequently as I do.

I finished Wind-Up Bird Chronicle at the airport (I was there on Friday instead of Monday- a funny story, but long story short, it meant two more days spent with family) and it ended pretty well. I stole my mom's copy of One Hundred Years Of Solitude, but haven't started to read it yet, since I'm in the middle of things at Evergreen and class will be starting and all kinds of things will conspire to stop me from finishing it quickly.

Oh, and my streak of only seeing good movies has been ruined. Once I got back, I ran into a dude who wanted to see "The Sea Inside" which I knew nothing about, but kind of expected weak things. It delivered. It's based on a true story, the name is a metaphor, and the director's the dude that did The Others or something equally weak. The kind of dull foreign-language film that gives art theaters a bad reputation. And I still haven't seen Sideways yet.

I also got to read all of Morrison's Doom Patrol in one go. That was kind of nice, although a weird experience when you're familar with most of the material. So, yeah, here's what happens when that's your experience, in list form:
1. The stylistic tic of employing poetry and the odd juxtaposition of two words is really overused at first, but it stops being done completely about halfway through.
2. When you know most of the weird concepts ahead of time, they mean nothing to you. This kind of goes with the first item on the list.
3. Willoughby Kipling is a funnier joke when viewed all in one go.
4. You start to care about the characters more. Weirdly: I wanted happy endings for them, which doesn't quite make sense. In reality, the reason it's sad when people die is because you will never see them again and won't get to have new experiences, etc. This happens invariably with fiction, simply because the story ends.
5. You're really sad when it's all over.

Went to the mall today, to pick up my mom's gift. I didn't buy it, though. I just found the location in the mall where the silk scarves are.

The mall makes me feel horrible. Two songs ran through my head: Sleater-Kinney's "Milkshake And Honey" ("Baby come home, I can't take the apartment alone") and Pavement's Black Walls ("You shouldn't hate your body, it's part of you. You shouldn't hate your family, they're part. You shouldn't hate your neighbors because they're part of you! These black walls. Black walls, black walls, black walls.") I wanted to sing them as I walked alienated through the department store.

I wish I had a camera for the things I'd seen. Emasculated boyfriends, unresponsive to their girlfriends hanging off them. The pathetic uniforms of the people who sell hot dogs. The fat kids and the old women.

I wanted to yell out "Hold me" and fall into the arms of someone who would either be responsive or disturbed.

And I have to go back there tomorrow, to finish the job. I feel like a Vietnam vet who can't function in society.

Also: Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle gets really good in the third book. Loren got into it early on, but then stopped reading, although he's asked for it for Christmas. I found the beginning largely unremarkable. It's improved almost immeasurably: The weirdness at the edges of the first book's domestic chronicle has builded upon itself and has become the book's new focus. I've heard some people had misgivings about how it ended, but we'll see how I react.

Still waiting on my brother's Christmas gift to arrive via mail. It's got two more days that it can arrive before I'm fucked and will just have to give him an IOU.

Last night I realized that TV shows on DVD are such a default awesome gift. Also: I think I'm over cash as a gift. It just seems sad to me, unless you're young and it's being given to you by your family who are directly responsible for your well-being at least to a certain extent. Amongst extended family, it just feels like they don't know you. And granted: My extended family doesn't know me, and I don't really want them to. Still: Should this really be the case? Best gift I've received from an extended family member ever was a copy of On Avery Island on vinyl. And sure, I've since given it to a roommate who actually had a record player. But the thought that was put into that gift was much appreciated. If it really is the thought that counts, (and I truly believe it is) then cash is the worst gift ever.

You know what would be a great gift from my mom and stepdad? Fucking replacement copies of some of the shit that they ruined and got water-damaged. That would be great.

When it's 5 in the morning and sleep shows no sign of approaching one's body, one's mind turns to deep thoughts. These deep thoughts invariably give way to shallower ones, because that is how one's mind operates.

So it's in this manner that I found myself pondering the idea of making a mix CD for my mom for Christmas, and the borderline impossibility of doing so.

The deep thoughts that led me here, you may ask? Generally: The inability of one human being to communicate or in some way connect with another when there isn't a shared language. My mom doesn't view music like I do. She wants something that is inoffensive. I don't think she engages any music emotionally on any levels other than nostalgia.

She likes latter Flaming Lips. She liked They Might Be Giants. She liked it when I listened to Loaded by the Velvet Underground. She bought a Belle & Sebastian record because she liked the title. She was tempted to buy a Beulah record based on its title and the song titles, but I told her not to because their good record wasn't at the store that day. She generally doesn't like Beck but liked Lost Cause off of Sea Change.

Oh, and I'm paying attention to lyrics too because love songs on a hand-crafted mix for my mom is icky. Too bad that's a fucking huge topic in pop music.

I AM INSANE.

She doesn't seem to like instrumentals.

I want to put on Jesus Walks by Kanye West. Because she likes Jesus, you see.

I AM INSANE.

So yeah, some contenders: Cat Power when not all suicide style, something by Broadcast, Beulah- A Good Man Is Easy To Kill, The Velvet Underground- Who Loves The Sun, something by Jeff Buckley although I don't know what, Palace Music- New Partner, Mirah- Apples In The Trees, something by the Books, something by Manitoba, some kind of Magnetic Fields/6ths, something by Yo La Tengo. Stereolab? The Mountain Goats?

I'm not going to make this mix. Although, probably, I should.

I'm buying her a silk scarf, as per her request.

I don't even think my brother liked the mix CD I made him for his birthday. If I were to give him a CD for Christmas I think it would be The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me, although my confidence in such a thing is low.

2004, year in review, part three: My life and what I read.

2004 was no 2003. Which would be an unfair expectation. After that burst of progress, I'm put in limbo. 2004 I mainly just hung out.

2005: My future is uncertain. Will I stay this summer in Olympia? Will I even continue to go to Evergreen? If not, then what the fuck will I do next fall? Probably 2005 will be like 2004, unless my musical ventures take off and consume a shitload of time. Which probably won't happen.

But anyway, 2004. I went back to Philadelphia over the summer, for more of those depressing interactions with my brother and his roommates. I was constantly being reminded of what a loser I was. Even though I got a theoretically cool job, working at a music store. Sure, it wasn't a good one. But, in terms of what it was, it's probably as good a job as I will ever have. And it mostly sucked. I will never be happy. Then there was the lack of all social interaction outside the job. Hoo. A lot like 2003 in that it was a total no friends summer. I did have some interaction with my brother's friends, which as previously mentioned, was frequently vaguely condescending. I have no idea how much any of those people respect me. This is weird and hurts my head.

Then I went back to Evergreen, where I was considerably happier, but still have less friends than I did last year. Some of those old friends left. Some stayed around Olympia, but I felt strangely alienated from them even at the end of last year. The list of new friends is a short one. The list of old friends departed is probably three times as long.

And then there were classes. Looking Backward ended amazingly. But Telling The Truth was an exercise in testicular injury. I had to read Don Delillo's White Noise for both.

I finished Lolita in 2004, I think. I also read Nabokov's The Eye. Also: Borges' Ficciones and Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle now. That was mainly it, besides the large amounts of bullshit I had to shovel into my mind for class. Talking about books in a year of review is bizarre except as an autobiographical conceit, simply because I don't read that much new fiction. I think that's true for most people who aren't book critics. I mean, there's a barrage of classics I'll be reading until I die. Getting on top of the new good stuff is hard to do, and I haven't really attempted it. I guess the only new writing I read was in the last McSweeney's, of which 25% of the content was recommendable. Five new authors to watch out for. And that's the new fiction that I would be inclined to like, probably? That had editors whose tastes probably occasionally align with my own? Fuck if I know. I read a great deal of comics, which makes me feel dumb, but you know, they're shorter. It's also a scene that's easier to be on top of. Of what I read: Seaguy sticks out, as does the new Eightball. Those were the highlights. Hopefully I'll have read all of Morrison's Doom Patrol in one go before the year is out. That's it!

2004, year in review, part two: The year in film.

I didn't see a bad movie all year. Actually, I did, but none in the theater, none that were new. And, with the exception of Before Sunset, every movie I saw, I saw in a commercial mainstream movie theater. This is all odd. I saw a lot of mainstream movies which people like to talk shit on, (including me, sometimes) and I enjoyed them.

Which proves my point, although it was one I didn't plan on making: Fuck the indie/mainstream divide. (at least if we're talking cinema) Most indie people are incredibly unambitious. If they do have ambitions, they can't implement them, due to lack of budgets. Not like small films can't be good, just that there is such a thing as indie hackery. Auteur theory! Motherfucking auteur theory! Give smart people money and they won't disappoint you!

Still a few movies I've yet to see: Sideways, The Life Aquatic, A Very Long Engagement, and 2046. 2046 might not even count as a 2004 film.

But yeah, a good year for movies. A good year for comedies.

Movie of the year was Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, duh. I could write tons of weird shit about it that means nothing: Like how I've been on the Gondry tip for years, and prefer him to Spike Jonze. Like how Charlie Kaufman is a champ. Like how Human Nature was slept on and due for a reevaluation: I'm calling it the Being John Malkovich to Eternal Sunshine's Adaptation, more obviously a comedy, but still possessing thematic weight and well-drawn characters. About how the people saying that this is Kaufman's first script with emotion are fucking retarded. Some people said it was sad, with its fatalistic view of relationships. But guess what? Most relationships do end badly, who the fuck doesn't know that? But this says fuck it anyway, take the good with the bad. It's optimistic, but in a way that's also fucking honest. Let the emo kids have Garden State, the people who see the beauty in Neutral Milk Hotel will be watching Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. Actually, we might watch both. I like to think we'll all enjoy Eternal Sunshine more.

I think I've gone over every movie I've watched this year in this blog, so you can see the other movies I recommend if you want to. They were all good. The movie I was the least sure of was Spider-Man 2 and I can't even front like I didn't enjoy that, regardless of the cheesy dialogue. Seriously: that was the worst movie I saw in theaters all year, and it wasn't even bad. (Although if you want to get technical, I saw worse movies at the Capital Theater that came out in 2003. This doesn't count for our purposes now.) I saw two zombie movies and both of them were great. One of those zombie movies I can't think of the director, so to a certain extent: Poop on auteur theory too, don't try to be a pretentious jackass. I like what I like. Fuck it. I'm smart. I don't have to explain my zombie fondness.

After I finished Gravity's Rainbow, my brain needed time to decompress. Weirdly, class provided that with its complete lack of mental stimulation. So I read book two of Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle in a day. The current reading list is book three of that and the Palomar hardcover. Hopefully, I will finish both of these before school starts up again.

I'm currently wait-listed for the program I wanted to get into. Here's the syllabus:
White Noise, Don Delillo. This is the third program I've had to assign this book. And it's also the third program I've taken.
The Awakening, Kate Chopin. My old nemesis.
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald. I never finished reading this in high school, although it was pretty decent.
The End Of The Road, John Barth. The only American writer who's work I haven't read, and I'm kind of unfamilar, although in general, I hear good things.
Hard-Boiled Wonderland And The End of the World, Haruki Murakami. Apparently this one has more of a pulpy feel to it, at least in terms of plot points. Also, shorter than Wind-Up Bird.
Confessions Of A Mask, Yukio Mishima. Mishima came up on a message board thread about Murakami. Good words were said, but maybe untrustable.
Masks, Fumiko Enchi. I don't know anything about this at all.
The Anatomy Of Dependence, Takeo Doi. Same with this. Still, my hopes? My hopes are high.

Also: Films will be viewed. Sweet mother of rock.

Just bought a handful of the books mentioned in the last post from Half.com. Also wanted to say that I should check out the films of Wong-Kar Wai. I've been hearing praise since In The Mood For Love came out, from smart people. No one I know personally, though.

In case the implication wasn't clear: I might be wait-listed currently, but I will fight like hell to get into this class. Although, apparently, the professor I had problems with last quarter was previously one of the teachers of this program, with the one who's teaching this quarter. Which disturbs me, but maybe unnecessarily.

Two things: Alex predicts that the next Animal Collective album will be their last. I disagree. I write this down as to remember it two albums from now. Their next album will be fucking amazing though. We've heard the songs in live form... Hoo. Sung Tongs is pretty great, but it's a weird album for me, as someone who doesn't take drugs. Also: the overall aesthetic seems overwhelming if you don't listen closely to each individual song. As an album, it's a cohesive piece of work, but listened to in passing as a whole, it's almost too cohesive, with a tendency to seem like one giant song with a few breaks. I didn't even think of We Tigers as being a great song until I decided to listen to it in keeping with my "I only like the short songs" theory, (There's another short song, Sweet Road, which blends in with the rest even listened to individually) and it was only today that I listened intently to Winters Love, which others have called the album's high point.

Also: ODB's autopsy results found him with a bag of cocaine in his body. He flew that day. The bag had a hole in it. Official cause is a heart attack, which I'm sure the burst bag of cocaine contributed to. Holy living fuck.

Wednesday I read my Ol' Dirty Bastard essay to class. I got positive feedback, but of a weird variety. People told me I could make money writing music reviews. Which is funny for two reasons: One being that I don't consider it a review, and another because of the fact that I wrote it five years after its release. Also, good music criticism should attempt to describe the music, which my piece, trying to avoid being called a review as it did, consciously avoided. I didn't even mention the beat to I Want Pussy. My professor didn't like it, of course, but he's a fucking douchebag, who insists on calling it a review and refused to call it an evaluation of gangsta rap culture in my eval, even after he said he'd change the terminology of "a review of a hip-hop record" if I gave him something to change it to. What a fucking fuckface of a fucker.

But after class was done, woo! The sun began shining it Olympia! Although not literally. It's been cold and wet outside. But inside, life's been swell. Thursday night was amazing. A song by The Art Project (Loren, Alex, and I) was recorded. A few practice takes. I fucked up the first chorus on each of the four takes. Still. Submitted it for rerecording for the Evergreen compilation, and the practices are currently being edited together by Alex with some guitar feedback drone (courtesy of Loren) to be thrown on top. What we have now sounds good though. Everyone got drunk. John Samson talked some hilarious crazy-talk, asking absurd questions. Like what would be the best combination of two movies. (I said Magnolia and Kill Bill vol. 1, and submitted Koyanaqatski [sic] and Touch of Evil on Alex's behalf. These are combinations that mean nothing, due to the absurdity of the exercise) Later he asked, out of the blue, what would be the best possible pinata. Hilarious night. Hopefully in future there'll be a nice mp3 of the song we recorded available for download.

Short story writing is currently half-stalled. I could probably push through without any problem. Which I might very well do, as the idea of finishing a story quickly is very appealing.

Haha, I'm a goddamn jackass. I woke up Alex to tell him that Animal Collective cover a Low song on this live set (Which, at an hour, is twice as long as the rest of their live sets) and then there's some talk and then fucking In Metal is played... The second half of the set is fucking Low. It's from some battle of the bands. Shit. Still. The songs early on are still pretty fucking great, and once I finish writing this I'll find out the exact moment when the switch is made from Animal Collective to Low.

And I'm finishing writing this now.

Had my eval today. I thought it wasn't going to happen until Thursday, but that's because I don't know what day it is ever. It was strangely anti-climactic. He caught a typo in my self-eval (effect for affect- that's a tricky one) that I didn't change. I guess there's a part of me that figures that no one will ever read the damn thing... There was also a John Cage joke in there. You know, for laughs.

I did get his piece of editing of my final piece though. It's one of the douchiest things ever. My professor is a bad man. The student I have the most distaste for is the one who is the most on his jock. His terrible old-man jock.

I would've loved to talk about how much he hates me. But this is the Northwest, where people are passive-aggressive. Still. After tomorrow, I will never have to deal with him again. Yay.

Got a new idea for writing a short story. Actually an old idea in terms of concept, but a new execution. I'll share it with you, because I'm not sure how feasible it is. This is the whole "magical realism meets indie rock" thing which is both my stated goal and the most retarded high-concept pitch to ever exist. Anyway, the idea has grown to the sort of thing that could be novel-length. But: What if I just wrote a short story out of it, by using the highly-condensed language of song-writing? The voice I wanted to aim for was that of The Hold Steady, which this new idea seems considerably more able to support. But if the ultra-condensed short-story thing doesn't work out, then what I have is one of those things which would have to be expanded to be a novel, which I'm not good at doing at all. It's pretty big in scope, at this point, you see.

I've got to be up in less than four hours. I've got to go to class. I want to get out early, in order to register for class as soon as I can. But according to my professor the asshole, missing the day in question (where I'd be hearing other people read their work... It would be a douchey thing to miss) would be the kind of thing to result in a loss of credit. Alex said he's be down to wake up at noon in order to sign me up, but Alex got pretty drunk tonight. Who knows what'll happen? I'm hoping for "Everything works out okay and I get into the good class."

My computer is virus-ridden. It craps out in a variety of different ways, and seems on the verge of crapping out permanently. The sound is skipping. Sometimes there are other sounds that betray the electric motorized roots. It acts like the wires are exposed and it is running on steam. Sometimes the screen will freeze. It will begin moving later.

I think some of this might be the fault of Firefox. I did have viruses before, but after downloading and installing Firefox, shit started freezing up.

I've sent some writings to myself, but there's a lot of music on this machine. I don't think it's going to die on me, as that is the kind of thing that tends to happen without warning.